Veiled
by Musafreen
Summary: Muggles, still mostly oblivious, are hunted. The remaining members of the Order of the Phoenix are in hiding. A different world, a different prophecy, a different vanquisher, a lost war. Ginnycentric AU saga. Canon couples. Under presentation revision.
1. Chapter 1

**Authors' Note:** AU beyond recognition. Whereby I've mutilated characters, history, plotlines and ideas. Have also implemented clichés. Why do I do this? I'll let you know when I have the answer.

**Disclaimer:** JKR's characters, in an incarnation of my own. This does not mean I own them.

**Warnings/About the Story:** I've just had some very strange food, and my stomach is acting up; expect strangeness here too. Excuses for the horribly cute kid, if he offends anyone. Plotline has not even begun to get explained in this chapter. Swearing. Innuendos. I'd put the rating at high T, maybe. OOCness; if I delve into regions too murky even for an AU, please feel free to tell me. Cannon pairings, because I really don't have the flexibility of imagination it takes to come up with new ships.

* * *

**Prologue**

* * *

"Mommy!"

Well, now _this_ was awkward.

Ginny MacHall squinted at the small form clutching around her knees, one with black hair. Definitely not hers, because she was convinced that with the sheer stubbornness her hair showed, becoming brighter by the day, it would doubtlessly insist on similarly tormenting whatever poor offspring she had. Not that there was anything to sanction this viewpoint, except maybe the general direction her life had taken this far; Murphy having proved to be an optimist.

"I'm not your mommy." She pried fingers loose from her jeans (worn out almost beyond the realms where fashion could save it).

The face pressing into her jeans peeked at her briefly before going back. It was a small boy, with big green eyes and a face on the verge of crying. The peek he'd taken at her had been done with a considerable amount of dread, and she suspected his return to her legs might have been more from a need to mask tears than anything else.

Then she heard a sniffle. Dear god, that had been meant to be an expression (of sorts), not a bleeding prophecy.

And because moderately good (okay, non-evil) young women did not abandon lost little boys in sprawling malls where anyone could take them, she sighed and lifted his head up. Tears ran freely down his scrunched up face, obviously sneering at the considerable efforts he'd put into controlling them. From her long and torturous stint as a miserable child, Ginny recognized the symptoms of stubborn pride in the face of high misery.

"Okay, I'll bite. When did you last see your mother?"

He shook his head, hiccoughing when he tried to speak. "Don't know," A flood of fresh tears burst out at the next word. "Mommy _said_ she'd never let me 'way, after 'Rius and Da-daddy poked the salana-smal- the li-lizards. And I can't f-f-find her!"

At that point he gave up fighting and bawled outright. Ginny experienced a small moment of triumph (she'd lasted a lot longer before breaking out like that), following which she physically smacked herself. This was not the time to get into second childhood.

"Can't you tell me anything else?"

He shook his head, suddenly suspicious, furiously wiping away the latest tears. "Daddy told me not to say things to people."

"Christ, kid. I'm not going to kidnap you. Believe me, one more mouth to feed, even temporarily, is more than I can afford. And then there's the ransom notes and the threatening calls and the precautions against law enforcement. I'll bet holding up a supermarket would be cheaper, especially if I use a water pistol."

He just looked at her miserably, occasionally wiping his nose, eyes brighter than ever with tears. Ginny almost used a word kids shouldn't be, in general, exposed to.

"At least tell me their names," she said.

"No names," he shook his head again, more violently. "Even 'Rius said so."

"'Rius is paranoid," Ginny told him.

"Not paramn-purnoind! He's a dog." He stated it like it should be obvious.

"Your dog told you not to tell anyone your name?" Imaginary voices, it was too early for this. Never mind the long and detailed world-dictatorship plans she'd shared with her pals Eeeny, Meeny, Miney and Cherwayzurangolla.

"No. 'Rius did," He frowned at her. "You don't know much."

"You're kinda late on the teaching, Master Yoda. I learnt that long ago, and the hard way too."

"You're weird."

"_Okay_, let's get this over with. The sooner you can tell me something about your parents, the sooner you can quit buggering me and go annoy them."

His face scrunched up with indecision, wondering if she was worthy of being supplied with top-secret information. He finally relented with "Mommy has hair like yours."

The poor woman. "More?"

"Daddy looks like me. And 'Rius has grey eyes!" He finished triumphantly, beaming at her. "Now find them!"

Ginny gave up. This was why she spent the next couple of hours waiting in the announcement room (or more accurately, the narrow space that counted as a hallway outside it) with a fidgeting three-year old intent on driving her to kill him. It was for nothing, though. The parents weren't here yet, and she was running late. So she yelled to the bored man inside to keep an eye on the kid, grabbed her handbag, and prayed her boss was in a kinder mood than usual today.

She'd taken maybe ten steps before a screech startled her.

"Ginny!"

Counting to ten, she turned, fixing the kid with her best glare. "What?"

He quieted down, slightly sheepish. "I thought you were leaving."

There was a slight pause where she felt guilty. "I am."

His eyes widened, threatening to fill up again. "You can't!"

"I have work. It's what most people have to endure to survive," she rubbed her nose. "You'll be fine, I'm sure your parents are out there somewhere sick about you. It's only take them a while to retrace there footsteps, get here and there you go. Home free."

"You can't leave!"

"I have to. Look, Carl will keep you company. Right, Carl?" Ginny looked at the dozing announcer, wincing at the muttered 'humph'.

His face scrunched up again. She steeled herself for another tantrum, surprised when he turned away defiantly, again furiously wiping his nose on his shirtsleeves, by now in a worse state than her jeans were.

"It'll be fine," she said, feeling like a jerk. "I swear. Your parents will be here soon."

He looked at her, tears starting again, before nodding and climbing back into his seat. Ginny started back down the stairs, annoyed at the kind of parents who were this careless with their children. But then again, even distracted affections were better than being left at an orphanage with nothing more than a piece of paper, with an outlandish first name written on it. If she ever found her parents, she was going to tell them all that she had to endure over being _Ginevra_, even though she doubted they would care.

Her next footstep came down with considerable force, and she bribed a bored guard to get the kid some sweets on the way.

* * *

Work was the usual, which was to say agonizing. The patrons of Mo's coffee shop still tended to whistle, comment and stare at her in a definitively non-platonic manner. Mo was still one of the biggest jerks she'd met in her lifetime, and considering the kind of people she'd been exposed to, it was saying a lot. The place still smelled odd, and she hated the goddamned uniform. Bend over a little and the color of her underwear would be the newest topic of discussion.

But it was a job, and it came with lodging. A pathetic one, admittedly, but better than the streets. Her being alive proved that.

Always choose the lesser of the two evils, because waiting for a good option was being unrealistic.

Once her shift was done, she headed back to the mall. So she was a softie, big deal. She had to make sure the kid was okay; he was too young for her to want him to be miserable.

She found Carl outside along with a cleaning lady and a security guard, glaring warily at the boy, who had his tiny fists held out in front of him. Around them she found a broken bulb, some upturned chairs and a strange orange furry object in the shape of a deformed pyramid.

Ginny immediately wished her shift had been longer, but before she could turn back, the boy had spotted her. Without wasting precious milliseconds, he abandoned the fighting stance and settled for running and hiding behind her legs. Ginny had a sense of déjà vu.

"What happened?" she asked them.

Carl dug out his crucifix and clutched it tightly. The woman looked ready to use her mop, and more in a way intended for cudgels than for cleaning.

"Child of the devil." Carl proclaimed. It would have been funny if it weren't for the mild insanity in his eyes.

"You've been watching too many movies." Ginny dismissed him.

He laughed. It wasn't a pleasant sound.

"They caught my brother once, dead. He didn't even have a mark on him - he just went out to get milk, came back in a body bag." he licked his lips nervously. "It's armeggadon is what it is. Witchcraft. Black magic. And that _thing_ is it. Unholy."

Ginny moved back, a careful hold on the boy. He was trembling, clutching at her for dear life. She looked at the cleaning lady.

"Can you believe the guy?" She asked weakly.

"I can, missy," the woman growled. "Things weren't like so before. It maybe not some fancy end of the world, but it is unnatural. People like it. Moving things with no strings, I saw it," she licked her lips in a gesture eerily like the one Carl had made. "_It_ ain't human."

It was the look she shot the kid that did it. Ginny felt herself boiling over with righteous rage.

"_He's_ a boy. A _little_ boy. Are the two of you out of your bloody microscopic minds?!" she extended her glare to include the sheepish security guard. "Have all of you been smoking pot?"

"Now, miss," the guard rumbled defensively. "It's hard times, people get nervous. And this place-" he nodded at the wreck. "It is a bit unnatural-"

"_Life _is unnatural, dammit! Strange things happen all the time. People get killed if they go out after dark, no one knows why or how. People get killed, period. Bad things happen. It's called _life_! And what sort of idiot blames a three-year old over that? He hasn't even started to live it!"

The guard scowled, but the sheepish look didn't entirely fade. Ginny tried to calm herself.

"Did you find the parents or not?" she managed, and calmly.

The guard gave her a look; the answer was obvious. She didn't even bother to glace at the other two.

Ginny sighed, removed the kid from her jeans (again) and told him to stay calm, because his parents _would_ come (that sounded fake even to her ears). She'd barely gotten past the first argument when the guard cleared his throat.

"Mall closes in half hour," he announced. "If the kid's here then, I'll kick him out."

By this time, he'd attached herself to her jeans again. She also knew that a kid that small wouldn't last the night. Her conscience spoke up again, making her wonder why _she_ had to be cursed with it when most people lived happily without one.

The last things she heard as she led him out were whispered prayers from Carl. Catching the gist (it oriented towards exorcism), she rubbed her forehead.

"Can I at least know your name? An answer would be appreciated, Child of the Devil."

He looked at her, much happier than he'd been before. "It's Harry."

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**End Note:** Don't say I didn't warn you. And a review would be better than nice.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter One: Where I can't seem to think of a title**

* * *

"_I don't like this." Lily Potter stated for the third time in the last hour. Her husband ignored her with the ease of long practice, focusing on dealing out the cards to his friends instead._

"_James, are you listening to me?" She demanded._

"_Always, dear," he answered dutifully. "Padfoot, stop looking at Remus's cards. He might just go canine on you."_

_Halfway through his monthly cycle, Remus Lupin growled in a manner which at least partly justified James's warning. He was never at his best during this time, but being dragged from bed and forced to play some insipid little game which was obviously just an excuse to make him suffer Lily's ire along with the two of them…it wasn't doing much to put those cheery smiles Sirius had promised into his face._

_He rubbed his head wearily. Anything in the name of friendship, he supposed._

"_Lily, you need to stop worrying," he said right before she was due to burst out again. "Harry's not a child, and he can take care of himself. We've pretty much taught him everything we know. Combined."_

"_Not to sneeze at." James added._

"_But he's out there!" Lily threw out her hands in the direction of the window. "And we haven't heard from him in weeks-"_

"_Eighteen days," Sirius Black pointed out without looking up from his cards. "Hardly something to worry about." _

_Lily stony silence was eloquent in its' own way. James casually moved away from his friend and Remus shook his head out of sheer pity. Long moments passed before Sirius looked up from the cards, somewhat guiltily._

"_Hell, Lily, when I go outside I don't come back for months. Harry's bound to be curious; he's pretty much spent his life locked up, after all. I'm sure he appreciates being out there without a chaperone-"_

"_Chaperone?"_

"_And a fine one at that too, just the right amount of firm-handed control it took to stop him from being completely spoilt by two adoring uncles and one knucklehead of a father," Sirius made his hasty retreat before her voice could turn chillier. In a more serious tone, he added, "He'll be fine, Lily. He's got more guts than I did at that age."_

_Lily's words were clipped when she answered, "I think that's probably going to be the problem."_

* * *

It was official. She hated kids.

They were noisy, they were over-exuberant, they got bored easily, they followed at her heels night and day while all she really wanted to do at the end of ant given day was to wanted to do was fume, glare, and toss back something alcoholic. Rinse and repeat. Running around her loft trying to keep a chronically curious charge out of collapsing everything in sight just so he could watch it happen was not anywhere on her agenda. Never had been, and now that she'd had the experience, never _bloody_ would be.

She was tempted to shake him till he behaved himself out of sheer terror, but his diminutive size always stopped her. She wasn't prepared to risk doing any real damage to the kid; because, all said and done he was just a poor, lost orphaned-

Something went bang and Ginny rose, cursing philanthropy. Next time she saw an abandoned child, she'd serve the world better by personally throwing it out into the street, or possibly feeding it to the nearest starving crocodile. It might have been unfair to take out her frustration on the whole of kidkind just because one thoroughly spoilt little brat had accomplished making her life chaotic, in addition to the hopelessness and misery which was already so much a part of it. She wasn't particularly bothered.

"What on earth did you do this time?" The small bathroom was barely enough to keep him at a precautionary distance from her. "I didn't think there was anything left to damage-"

His lip wobbled at the tone, his eyes as wide as they could go. The unshed tears in them made the green clearer, and they were somewhat impossible to ignore, what with making up most of his thin face. Ginny had melted when she first saw the expression, cursing herself for being such a heartless witch. Two weeks with him and she'd learnt better. He was showing all signs of growing up to be a skillful manipulator. If she hadn't been one of his hapless victims, she'd have been suitably impressed.

"You can save it," Ginny told him. "I told you before, do not touch any one of my possessions with the intention of reducing it to some…other form."

And then there was that. 'Demon child' hadn't really been that far off the mark. Ginny had been one of the people who'd scoffed at the idea that paranormal creatures were what was responsible for the country's fall some two decades ago. (Most of them at the orphanage were like that. They'd lived in said time, and the survivors were still equipped with their primary weapons; no-nonsense attitudes, potent streetfighting skills, and remarkably hard heads.) Two weeks of objects inexplicably changing form and colour had her doubting her conclusions.

He pouted, "But I'm _doing_ it."

"Yeah. That's why I don't tell the _walls_ to stop alternating between pink polka dots and green and white stripes," she closed her eyes. "Dear god, I can't believe I'm actually considering he's-"

"'Rius and Daddy liked it." He pronounced stiffly. Ginny felt a brief stab of irritation. She couldn't tell if it had been directed at his relatives for not being here, or at him for hanging on so tightly to people who'd obviously abandoned him.

Maybe she was being uncharitable. Maybe they were frantically looking for him and couldn't find him.

Yeah, right. With food so scarce, abandoned children were not exactly a rare phenomenon. She didn't want to be the person who broke it to the little kid that no matter how cute he could be (which was a considerably cute, she admitted grudgingly) it wasn't going to make an iota of difference; his family _wasn't_, not anymore.

"Daddy and 'Rius are not here," she told him. "It's just Ginny, and Ginny does not like having her house mutilated."

He scowled fiercely, all traces of his puppy-dog face gone. Ginny was suddenly exasperated. Children, you could never do things right with them. If parenthood was a prolonged version of this, she could see how her parents would've been happy to leave her at the damned place.

"You really don't know anything," he told her, somewhat waspishly. "Even Mommy liked it, and she hates it when I break things."

"I wonder why."

He scowled at her again, and she knew this meant stony silence till the next time he slept. For some reason, he always went back to badgering her after waking up. It was plainly exhausting.

"Can you at least _try_ not to do it?" she asked him, somewhat waspish herself. "A little bit, even? My funds would appreciate it, and so would my eyes. I'm a lot less colour-blind than most people seem to think."

He humphed, past the point of deigning her with actual words. Ginny had a brief, blissful image of herself holding him by the collar over a sheer black abyss.

"'Rius wouldn't have-" he began, tone suggesting she was the toddler here. Ginny didn't let him go any further before she shook him violently, consequences be damned.

"One more word about them and I swear I'll-" she took a deep breath to get rid of the graphic images. "For God's sake, Harry! Don't you get it, they left-"

The surprising vehemence with which he reacted told her he wasn't as oblivious as she thought he'd been.

"They didn't!" he literally clawed at her face, the short nails thankfully not enough to do any damage. "They'll come! They've never _not-_" Ginny was startled to realize he'd just burst into sobs. She knew kids were expected to cry a lot, but it was the first time she'd seen actual sobs coming from him. Dangerously bright eyes, scrunched up face; all of it happened on a regular basis. Actual tears, however, hadn't made their appearance even once since the time she'd found him. Which just proved her future master-manipulator theory.

Or maybe he was just damningly stubborn. She thought she might just understand that.

Almost without noticing, she'd pulled him into a hug.

"Not." He muttered defiantly, but closed his arms around her neck, tears flowing freely.

"Don't think about it now," she murmured in what she hoped was a comforting tone. "It's not important."

"He _said_ they'd get to me, " he choked out between sobs. "He said Mommy would- I wish I hadn't left Wormy-"

"Your pet earthworm?" she hazarded a guess, receiving mild contempt in return. She didn't mind as much as she might have done. _Anything_ to get rid of the tears, and anyway , he didn't try to correct her this time.

"But I didn't want to worry Mommy," he sniffed, ignoring her comment. "Once I hid in the cupboard and she couldn't find me and she threw things and cried and really got mad at me-"

Ginny patted his back reassuringly, not that it had any effort except making him howl even louder.

"And I want to _see_ her. And 'Rius and Daddy. And I haven't seen them for ages and-" he burst into a new flood of tears, which faintly impressed Ginny after all the crying he'd already done.

"And he sids they'd be there. He _said_ they'd-"

"Who?" Ginny asked, a little sharper than she intended. If he'd been kidnapped…

"Dunno," he sniffed again, wiping his nose. "but he had oily hair."

"You're really bad at giving out descriptions, you know that?" Ginny wiped the snot from her back and made a face at her hand. "Bath now, squirt. Don't make me manhandle you."

"'Rius-" he started sleepily, then nodded off.

Unfortunately for him, it was just her. Poor kid.

* * *


End file.
